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Fritz Teufel
Fritz Teufel (* 17. Juni 1943 in Ludwigsburg; † 6. Juli 2010 in Berlin) was a co-founder of the West Berlin Kommune 1. He was later a member of West Germany’s armed resistance group, the 2. June Movement. Studies Fritz Teufel came to west Berlin in 1963 and began to study German studies, Media and Communication studies and Theater at the Free University, Berlin. With Dieter Kunzelmann und Rainer Langhans he was one of the co-founders of the Kommune 1, which above all became well known in Europe for consciously provocative actions and for being against the dominant social constraints. The "Pudding Assassination" Teufel and some others were arrested at the start of April 1967. They were supposed to have met under conspiratorial conditions and planned attacks against the life or health of the American Vice President, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, by means of bombs, plastic bags filled with unknown chemicals or with other dangerous tools, such as stones. Those arrested were Ulrich Enzensberger, Volker Gebbert, Klaus Gilgenmann, Hans-Joachim Hameister, Wulf Krause, Dieter Kunzelmann, Rainer Langhans and Fritz Teufel. The tabloid Bild's headline was "Humphrey to be assassinated", the weekly Zeit spoke of "Eleven little Oswalds". Even the New York Times featured a report on the dangerous plan of eight communards to attack the Vice-President with pudding, yoghurt, and flour. They were released the day after Humphrey’s visit Demonstration against the Shah On the 2. June 1967, on the same day that Benno Ohnesorg was shot dead by a West Berlin policeman (later discovered to be a Stasi agent) Fritz Teufel was arrested for throwing stones during the demonstration against the Shah of Persia. He was held on remand until the start of the trial in November. He showed no respect for the legal system or its representatives. On the 22. December 1967, he was found not guilty and set free. Radicalisation With time, Fritz Teufel went more and more in the direction of armed resistance and urban guerilla warfare. He was imprisoned for two years for attempting to firebomb a Munich court. The press spoke of a miscarriage of justice, as there was no evidence for Teufel’s participation. In 1975, Teufel was arrested again and charged with being a leading member of the 2. June Movement which had kidnapped Peter Lorenz, the chairman of the Berlin CDU. He was held on remand for 5 years before the case came to court. Only at the end of the trial, after the summing up of both the defense lawyers and the state attorney, did Teufel present his alibi, which proved that at the time of the kidnap, he was working under a false name in a factory in Essen. He was immediately released. Teufel said that the late presentation of his “B-libi” was to show that innocent people could be imprisoned and to show how the systen functioned. As well as that, he was convinced that he would have had to spend five years in prison anyway, for possesing an illegal weapon and for his support of the 2. June Movement. Later years Later in life, Teufel worked as a free journalist for the left-wing daily paper, the “die tageszeitung”- “taz“ and as a bicycle courier in Berlin. Due to being ill with Parkinsons disease, he eventually had to give up this job. At the end, he lived a quiet life with his partner, Helene Lollo and friends in Berlin-Wedding. Literature · Marco Carini: Fritz Teufel, „wenn's der Wahrheitsfindung dient“. Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 2003. ISBN 978-3-89458-224-1. · Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth (Hrsg.): 1968. Ein Handbuch zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Studentenbewegung. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2007. ISBN 978-3-476-02066-6. · Rainer Langhans, Fritz Teufel (Hrsg.): Klau mich, StPO der Kommune 1. In: Voltair-Handbücher, Band 2 Edition d. Kommune 1, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1968. ISBN 3-88167-022-X (Unveränderter Nachdruck bei Trikon, München 1977 und 1978). · Fritz Teufel: Aus Teufels Küche. A-Verbal-Verlag, Berlin 1988. ISBN 3-88999-008-8. External Links [http://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fritz_Teufel Wikiquote: Fritz Teufel – Quotation · Biography at whoswho.de · Photo of his arrest during a demonstration in January 1967 · „Ich war am anfälligsten für die Liebe“ – his last interview - with the Tagesspiegel 25. Januar 2010 · Obituary The humorist is dead - die tageszeitung, (Taz)7. Juli 2010